In this blog post, we will examine how legal responsibility and ethical judgment work in situations of conflicting duties and emergency evacuation.
Two patients with equal chances of survival were brought to a hospital with only one ventilator. One was a woman about to give birth, and the other was her husband. The doctor in charge of their treatment was unable to treat one of them because there was only one ventilator. In an emergency situation where multiple duties conflict with each other and the actor has no choice but to fulfill one duty, the situation where fulfilling one duty makes it impossible to fulfill the other duty is called a conflict of duties. In a conflict of duties, the duties must be legal duties, and the actor must not be responsible for causing the conflict of duties for the conflict of duties to be established. Duties are divided into positive duties, which are duties to perform certain acts, and negative duties, which are duties not to perform certain acts. A positive duty refers to a case where the actor uses physical force to change something that occurs naturally, while a negative duty refers to a case where the actor can change something but does not use physical force and allows the event to occur. For example, in the emergency situation described above, if the doctor in charge fails to connect the patient to a ventilator, the doctor has violated his duty to act to protect life.
Situations in which duties may conflict with each other can take the form of a conflict between a duty to refrain from acting and a duty to act, a conflict between a duty to act and a duty to refrain from acting, or a conflict between two duties to act. However, not all of the above three types of conflicts constitute conflicts of duty. Most criminal law scholars do not consider conflicts between duties of omission to be conflicts of duty. On the other hand, depending on the point of view, conflicts between duties of action and duties of omission may be regarded as emergency避難 rather than conflicts of duty. Emergency evasion is an act that has reasonable grounds to avoid a current danger to one’s own or another’s legal interests. In this case, legal interests refer to interests protected by law, and danger refers to a state of risk to legal interests. If a driver suddenly tries to avoid a pedestrian who appears while driving, but there is a cliff on the left side, and the driver quickly turns the steering wheel to the right, damaging part of a building, this act can be considered emergency evasion. If it is recognized as an emergency escape, it is not punishable. In terms of the concept of duty, this can be understood as a conflict between the duty to protect the life of another person and the duty not to destroy the property of another person, and the act of turning the steering wheel is a violation of the duty not to destroy property. Therefore, the conflict between the duty to act and the duty not to act is essentially the same as an emergency escape, and it has been argued that it should be excluded from the conflict of duties.
There is a view that conflict of duties and emergency evasion are similar in that, in both cases, it is impossible to preserve the legal interests of one party without infringing on the legal interests of the other party in an emergency situation, and therefore conflict of duties itself cannot be distinguished from emergency evasion. However, the difference between conflict of duties and emergency evasion becomes clear when the scope of duties is limited to positive duties. Emergency evasion has the potential to resolve a conflict of legal interests by accepting the danger oneself without transferring it to a third party, whereas a conflict of duties does not have such potential. In other words, in the previous example, the driver has the potential to resolve the conflict of legal interests by sacrificing his own legal interests by turning the steering wheel to the left instead of to the right. On the other hand, the doctor mentioned above does not have such a possibility. Furthermore, unlike emergency evacuation, where the infringement of legal interests is caused by the active conduct of the actor, a conflict of duties is caused by the omission of the actor to prevent the event from occurring. Therefore, a conflict of duties usually refers to a conflict between duties to act.
If we limit conflicts of duty to conflicts between duties to act, we can consider two cases. These are cases where there is a difference in the value of the conflicting duties and cases where duties of equal value conflict with each other. In the former case, it is generally accepted in criminal law that it is not illegal to sacrifice a duty of lower value in order to fulfill a duty of higher value. This is because fulfilling the obligation with higher value among multiple obligations is considered to be in accordance with the legal order. However, when obligations of equal value conflict, opinions are divided between those who consider it not illegal to violate legal interests through omission and those who consider it illegal but exempt from liability.
The view that it is not illegal is called the theory of partial illegality. According to this theory, if obligations of equal value conflict with each other and cannot be fulfilled at the same time, the choice of which obligation to fulfill should be left to the conscience of the actor. If it is illegal, then the act of the person who fulfilled one of the obligations and the act of the person who did not fulfill any of the obligations would be the same in that they are both illegal, which is unreasonable. In contrast, there is a view that, since none of the obligations of equal value can be abandoned, there is illegality in the breach of the obligation, but that the responsibility can only be exempted. This is called the partial exemption theory. According to this theory, the act is illegal in that one of the obligations of equal value has been abandoned, but since lawful conduct cannot be expected in a conflict of obligations, the act can be exempted.
In such situations of conflicting obligations, moral dilemmas and legal responsibility become intricately intertwined. Actors must be able to predict the consequences of their actions and be prepared to take responsibility for those consequences. In addition, society must provide clear standards and guidelines for such situations to help actors make the best decisions. For example, it is important for hospital medical ethics committees to establish protocols for such situations and train medical staff to make quick and correct decisions in emergencies.
Furthermore, various academic approaches are needed to understand the nature of conflicts of duty. In-depth research and discussion on conflicts of duty should be conducted in fields such as law, ethics, and medicine. Through such a multifaceted approach, we can explore the causes of conflicts of duty and seek solutions, thereby enabling society to establish a more fair and ethical legal order.
